Probation Ordered for Care Home Operator : Lowe, Jailed for Contempt After Failing to Close His Facilities, Also Must Do Community Service

The Rev. Kenneth Lowe, an operator of board-and-care homes who refused to eat for 16 days in Orange County Jail while serving a sentence for contempt of court, was placed on three years’ probation Tuesday.

The balance of his 230-day jail sentence will not be imposed if Lowe completes 780 hours of community service and abides by all laws, Superior Court Judge Judith M. Ryan decided.

Lowe had been jailed after he ignored portions of a court order that he shut down four unlicensed board-and-care homes because of substandard conditions. Ryan’s decision Tuesday directed probation officials to find volunteer work for him by June 26. Asked if he was pleased, Lowe said: “Not necessarily. I’ve got to see what I have to do.”

Lowe’s court-appointed adviser for the contempt case, Larry B. Bruce, said he is confident that probation officials will find “a volunteer activity appropriate to his covenant with God.”

The case began in 1983 when state officials raided four homes run by Lowe. Investigators alleged that they found 16 of 24 residents in need of better medical care. Some residents, including a terminally ill cancer patient, should have been in hospitals or nursing homes, Deputy Atty. Gen. Richard Spector said. In one home, investigators found five elderly residents “restrained in their beds” in armless jackets fastened in back, Spector said, with their beds “blocking the exits.”

Lowe, a Mission Viejo resident, maintained that his homes were safe and that he did not need a state license to operate them.

Spector, whose office had won the original court order, had asked Ryan to include as a condition of probation Lowe’s compliance with all laws, a reference to his continued operation of a board-and-care home in El Toro.

“He’ll violate that (probation), too,” Spector said after the hearing.

But Ryan referred to “severe problems” in the jail resulting from a federal judge’s order to reduce overcrowding. And force-feeding Lowe or transferring him to the jail ward at UCI Medical Center would not be the best solution, Ryan said.

“What possible objection could the state have to some program of community service? Rev. Lowe could perform good functions, as opposed to spending taxpayers’ money to have him in the County Jail,” Ryan said.

“The state has already spent a lot of money pursuing this case,” Spector responded.

The order requiring Lowe to shut down his four homes was in the form of a preliminary injunction. On Tuesday, Ryan criticized the attorney general’s office for a delay in seeking a permanent order. She said that “having Lowe sit in jail is not getting the (El Toro) home shut down.”

State officials inspected Lowe’s remaining home last week, and Spector said that conditions had improved since the raids three years ago.

“My fear is that if he walks out of here a free man, that will be carte blanche to return to the situation we had before, which was appalling,” Spector said.

Lowe, who said he lost 31 pounds during his 16-day hunger strike last month, said he is no longer associated with the Universal Life Church. He said Tuesday that he is now a member of Nisus Church and Bible Assembly.